DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE @SF Playhouse
Cast: (L - R)Bill English, Joan Mankin, Amy Resnick, Florentina Mocanu, Rachel Klyce and Jackson Davis
DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Susi Damilano. SF Playhouse,
RUHL RULES THE BAY AREA WITH DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE
The must see production of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone at the SF Playhouse comes hot on the heels of her smash hit In the Next Room( or the Vibrator Play) at the Berkeley Rep. TheatreWorks mounted her Pulitzer Prize nominated A Clean House, and Berkeley Rep had an extended run with Eurydice. The Clean House was fantasy and Eurydice is mythological. We get to expect well-written plays with quirky plots and unexpected twists from this multitalented, prize-winning playwright. She does not disappoint in Dead Man’s Cell Phone and SF Playhouse, under Susi Damilano’s free flowing direction of a top notch cast comes up with another winner.
In this dark comedy, Ruhl melds the overly intrusive, ubiquitous cell phone with a plot dealing with illegal sales of human donor organs. I did mention that she has a quirky bent. It all begins with mousey, unmarried 39 year old Jean (a pitch perfect Amy Resnick) enjoying a bowl of soup in a café with the incessant ringing of a cell phone belonging to a dead man, Gordon(Bill English). What’s a lonely girl to do? Beside that, the phone must have a soul of its own and begs to be answered? Yes, that is sort of the question Ruhl satirizes as Jean picks up the phone, answers it, starting a series conversations, packed with well meaning lies as she navigates Gordon’s bizarre world.
Ruhl covers three of the most egregious intrusions of cell phones starting with the café scene. Second, is the funeral ceremony when Gordon’s wacky mother (played to perfection by Joan Mankin) ends her bizarre eulogy selecting the music “You Never Walk Alone”, as “the” cell phone rings. “That’s right. Because you’ll always have a machine in your pocket that might ring!” Finally yet importantly (horrors), just as Jean and Gordon’s younger brother Dwight (Jackson Davis) are “bonding” in a semi-love scene the phone rings. Jean who has never owned a cell phone before is unaware of the cardinal rule: Never answer the phone while making love or having sex.
Initially written without intermission, to open the second act , Ruhl sets up a monolog for the not so dear departed Gordon. Bill English nails the sarcasm, innuendo and truisms in a rat-a-tat clip, never missing a beat without straining for laughs. The quirks come fast and furious in act two as Jean meets up with Gordon in limbo and postulates that all the cell phone talk is just hanging around “out there” for eternity. Jean meets with Gordon’s under appreciated wife Hermia (great job by Rachael Klyce) in a delicious bar scene. When Jean learns all the dastardly deeds involving Gordon and his girlfriend, Carlotta (a sexy mischievous Florentina Mocanu), her goody-goody two shoes personality kicks into high gear and she takes off South Africa to set to right all the terrible wrongs of selling body parts.In the program, you will notice Dave Maier is listed as a fight director. Fight director? Yep, Carlotta and Jean go at it over the cell phone that contains all the numbers needed to continue the trade in body parts.
Forget the many paragraphs written about the intellectual, philosophical, intrusive nature of cell phones and our need to be connected. Just go and see a great show playing out on the set created by an award winning design team of (alphabeticaly) Cliff Caruthers (sound/composer), Bill English (set), Kurt Landisman (lights), Mark Koss (costumes) and Seren Helday (properties).
Running time under two hours with a 20 minute opening night intermission.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of TheatreWorld Internet Magazine